A Little World

“Ah! he’s a bad un, that boy. What do you think he did another night, sir? Put me in a cold prespiration he did, and then made me rise up with that big pulpit-cushion in my two hands. I should have heaved it and knocked him over like a skittle; only I knew it would not only upset him but all my plans as well; so I sat down again and filled my mouth full of pocket-handkerchief to stop back the indignation, for my pot was hot with thorns. What was he a doing of, sir? Why, I’ll tell you. A dog! he’d got both his shoes off, and one in each hand, a walking all over the church backards and forrards and ziggery-zaggery, balancing hisself like a monkey the while. Not very wrong that you’ll think, Mr Ruggles; but he was doing of it all on the narrow tops of the pews; and hang me, sir, if he didn’t try to jump across the middle aisle, only he came down flop on his back, and got up whimpering, and limped out of the church as hard as he could go. Then, I’ve seen Mr – what, sir?”

“Pray put me out of my misery,” implored poor Tim.

“I’m a coming to it fast, sir,” said Purkis. “I’ve seen Mr Pellet come down and stop by the poor-box on the side where the door was open, and sigh bitterly, and go away again; and though I’ve watched a deal that way, I couldn’t see nothing wrong out of the pulpit; so, to the utter neglect of Purkis’s boot and shoe emporium, and to the constant annoyance of Mrs Purkis, which said it was no business of mine, I kep’ on the watching, for I never give way, sir, in anything – not a peg. Why, sir, I’m a lion to that woman, sir; and as long as I’m a lion, why she’s a lamb; but if I was to stop being a lion, sir, it’s my belief she’d grow into a fierce tiger-cat, sir, and I should only be a mouse. Never give way to a woman, sir; they’re made on purpose to be ruled; and if you don’t rule ’em, sir, why, they’ll know as there’s something wrong, and they’ll rule you.

“Well, sir, I took to t’other side then, and used to sit in the reading-desk; and there I never saw anything but aggravation. Young Ichabod playing pitch-and-nickem with buttons and nickers in the middle aisle, or turning summersets over the hassocks; and once, I declare solemnly, I could hardly bear it, for if he didn’t get my mace, sir, and begin by walking up and down, and making believe it was me; then he must get to balancing it on his chin till he let it go agen one of the lamp glasses and cracked it, and I’ll crack him for it now the thing’s found out, with the very cane too as he took and stole out of mischief. But the worst of all was when he took and put that there staff across a couple of the free-seats, and began taking races and jumps over it, just as if he was in a playground instead of the Holy Catholic Church. Why, sir, it was enough to make the stone images on the monnyments tumble on him and crush him into the pavement – a bad dog!

“Then I tried the galleries; but I found out nothing there; and at last I took to the churchwarden’s pew, for I was determined to keep it up; though I must own, sir, as a man as always speaks the truth – for the truth may be blamed but can never be shamed – and as one who may soon be on his oath, but who respex you, and is sorry for you, Mr Ruggles – that I should have found it out sooner if it hadn’t been for the church being that bitter of a night that I was obliged to take a drop of something to keep the cold out of me for fear it might affect me so as to make me sneeze just at the most partickler time.”

“Please, sir, do – oh! do go on,” cried Tim, imploringly.

“Yes, yes! I’m going on,” said Purkis, solemnly. “So, sir, more than once I’m afraid I went to sleep in the big pew, same as I did on the night when I woke up and felt horribly frightened at hearing a something rattling about in the middle of the church; and for a time, sir, waking up fresh out of a long dream where I’d been heading a procession of thieves and poor-boxes, and policemen on the way to the Clerkenwell Police Court, I thought it had been something of what my old Scotch friend Sergeant Pike used to call ‘no canny.’ But there, sir, I soon shook that off, and rising very gently, I peeped over the edge of the pew, and I could just make out some one going along the middle aisle, and I knew the step as well as could be, besides a crackling staybone-and-busky noise as the figure made every time it stooped, while it never turned to the right or left without going altogether as if the neck was stiff.”

“Then it was a figure?” said Tim, wringing his hands.

“Oh yes, sir, it was a figure,” said Purkis, waving the slipper more and more; “a stiff figure, as went softly to first one and then the other poor-box; and I heard a key go and money chink after the figure had been well round the church. It sounded just like Mrs Purkis emptying out the till on Saturday nights.”

“But pray – ” exclaimed Tim.

“Don’t interrupt, sir! Hush!” exclaimed Purkis pompously, as if he were frowning down a pack of boys, and making the chattering young dogs shake in their leather breeches; while gazing mournfully at him, as if he knew all now, Tim Ruggles, with his face full of wrinkles, waited to hear more.

“I knew the step, sir,” said Purkis, “and I could see the figure turn all round at once, sir, without moving its head; and then, in my lair, I watched and watched with my heart beating fierce, for I knew that the time was come for me to vindicate innocence, and to – to – er – er – wait Mr Ruggles, sir. And I did wait, Mr Ruggles, sir, till I heard the church-door shut softly, when all was so still that I couldn’t help thinking it might be fancy.”

“And it was fancy, Mr Purkis, wasn’t it?” exclaimed Tim, eagerly.

“No, sir, it warn’t fancy,” said Purkis, austerely, as he waved Tim back with the slipper. It was all true as true; and I slapped my knees and rubbed my hands, and then I looked up towards the old organ and nodded at it; for I thought of the vally of what I’d found out, sir, to a good man, and no end of a family of children. And then, when I thought I’d waited long enough not to be seen, I went and knocked up Mr Timson, our churchwarden; fetched him out of bed, for it was one o’clock and past; and when he got down to me in his dressing-gown, he began a bullying me like anything; for he thought, you know, I’d come boxing with my Christmas-piece.

“But, ‘gently, sir,’ I says; ‘don’t be rash – don’t be hasty.’ ‘Hasty!’ he says: ‘I’ll report you to Mr Grey. Get out, sir, you’re drunk: I can smell rum here.’ ‘And a good thing, too,’ I says, ‘for keeping cold out when you’re watching poor-boxes at night in a empty church?’ ‘What?’ he says, ‘what did you say, Purkis?’ he says. For answer, sir, I laid a finger solemn-like against one side of my nose, and looks at him out of the corners of my eyes. ‘Purkis,’ he says, ‘Purkis: you don’t mean as you have found it out?’ ‘But I do, sir,’ I says; and then I told him all, and he begged my pardon; and then, if he didn’t go into fits of delight, hopping about ‘I always said as it wasn’t Pellet,’ he kept on saying. Then he danced round the room, with his little bare legs popping out of the bottom of his dressing-gown, and he slapped me on the back over and over again. ‘Poor old Pellet!’ he says; ‘I’m glad: out and out glad!’ Then he called me a trump, which, though it was well meant, didn’t sound respectful to a man in my position in life, and beadle of St Runnle’s for all the years as I’ve been.

“But I didn’t show no temper, sir, for he meant well, as I said before; and he gets out something in an ugly little bottle, as he poured into two of the wretchedest little glasses you ever see; but when you come to taste it, my! it was just like what he called it; ‘gold water,’ he said it was, and he chuckled and danced as he poured it out. ’Pon my word, sir, it was like swallowing melted sovereigns.”

Tim groaned, but remained patient and motionless.

“Then, sir,” continued Purkis, “I went away a happy man, promising that I’d be with him next morning – no, it wasn’t, though, it was the same morning – to run down with him to see the vicar, as was in the country.

“‘Do you mean to report me, sir?’ I says. ‘Don’t be a fool, Purkis,’ he says. ‘I want you to tell him with your own lips.’”

“Tell him what, sir? – tell him what?” said Tim, piteously.

“That I’d seen – ”

“Stop – stop!” exclaimed Tim, imploringly, as if, now that it had come to the point, and he was about to have that which he already knew corroborated, he could not bear it. “I don’t think I can quite take it yet; but there! – yes – please go on.”

“That I’d seen her, sir, as I could swear to, go to the poor-boxes one after another, and take something out, just like Mrs Purkis emptying the till, and then steal off, sir, so still that you could hardly hear her, only for the clicking of the key in the lock, and then she was gone.”

“She was —she was gone?” faltered Tim.

“Yes, sir; she was. Dark as it was, I could make out all I have said; and then it puzzled me that we should never have settled it upon her before, when we found the money missing. But, you see, she was always so prim, and clean, and neat, and respectable.”

“Always, Mr Purkis, sir,” said Tim; “always.”

“And no one never would have thought it of her,” said Purkis.

“No, sir; no one,” responded Tim, and then, sinking his voice to a whisper, he looked anxiously round the shop, dropping his hat, and then starting as he caught Purkis by one of his buttons – “Who was it, sir? – who was it?” he said, in a voice hardly above his breath.

“Why, you don’t want me to tell you, I’m sure, sir?” said Purkis, stoutly.

“Oh yes, I do! – oh yes, I do!” groaned Tim.

“Then,” said the beadle, “I’ll tell you!” When there came the words “O Joseph!” plainly heard from the inner room, pointing to the fact that Mrs Purkis had been listening the whole time. But her lord heeded not the soft appeal, but, leaning forward, he placed a hand upon Tim’s shoulder, his lips close to his ear, and whispered the words.

With a cry, the little tailor caught up his hat and dashed out of the shop, then, after silencing the irritated bell, Mr Purkis gave one of his customer-seeking looks up and down the street, but it was only to see poor Tim Ruggles disappear round the corner.

“I knowed you’d commit yourself, Joseph,” whimpered Mrs Purkis, standing at the inner door, and rolling her arms tightly in her apron.

“My dear,” said Mr Purkis pompously, “it was only my dooty!”

Volume Three – Chapter Seventeen.

John Brown

“It’s all against rule and regulation, and that sort of thing,” said the sergeant, as he and Harry Clayton were being jolted over the stones in a Hansom cab; “but ours is a particular case. The old gentleman’s there long before this, sir. He seemed to revive like magic as soon as ever I told him the news. He just hid his face for a few moments, and then said quite sharp, ‘Go and fetch Mr Clayton, and bring him after me,’ telling me, of course, where you were gone; and here I am, sir.”

“But it seems so strange,” said Clayton. “I can’t understand it.”

“Strange, sir! ’Pon my soul, sir, if you’ll excuse me for saying so, I’m quite ashamed of myself. Thought I was up to more than that. And yet, here’s all the wind taken out of my sails, and I’m nowhere.”

Harry nodded, for he wanted to think, but the sergeant rattled on —

“It’s always the way with your biggest puzzles, sir: the way to find them out is the simplest way – the way that’s so easy that you never even give it a thought if it occurs to you. Perhaps you remember that chap in the story, sir, as wanted to keep a certain dockyment out of the way of the foreign detectives – French police – over the water – secret police, I think they call themselves; not that there’s one of them who can hold a candle to our fellows. Spies, perhaps, would be the better name for them. Well, he knew that as soon as he was out, they’d search the place from top to bottom. Well, what does he do? Hide it in the most secret place he could think of? Not he; for places that he could think of as being the safest, perhaps they might think of too. He was too foxy, sir; and he just folds it up like a letter, sticks it in a dirty old envelope, and pops it into the card-rack over the chimney-piece, – plain, for all folk to see; and, as a matter of course, they never so much as look at it. That’s just been the case with the young squire here; he’s been stuck up in the card-rack over the chimney-piece, chock before my eyes, and I’ve been shutting ’em up close so as not to see him, when he’s been as good as asking me to look. There, sir! I haven’t patience with myself; and I’m going to ask to be put on the sooperannuation list, along with the pensioners as I call ’em. Mysterious disappearance! why, it wasn’t anything of the sort, sir. But here we are!”

The cab was checked as he spoke, and alighting before a great gloomy looking building, the sergeant led the way up a flight of stone steps, and into a hall, where a liveried porter saluted him with a nod.

“Here, bring us the book again, Tomkins,” said the sergeant; and the porter reached a large folio from a desk, and placed it before the sergeant upon a side-table.

“Here you are, sir,” said the sergeant, eagerly, as he turned back some leaves, till he came to one which bore the date of Lionel’s disappearance. “Now, look here!”

He pointed to an entry in the accident register; for they were in the entrance-hall of a large hospital.

“Look at that, sir,” said the sergeant again; “and tell me what you think of it.”

Harry Clayton bent over the book, and read —

“Brown, John, stableman, run over by a cab. Severe concussion of the brain.”

“Now, sir, what do you make of that?”

“Nothing at all,” said Clayton, blankly.